Gravity Works Chicago Retreat 2023
Gravity Works enjoyed a much needed in-person work retreat in Chicago, March 22–24. This is the first time the whole company has seen one another face to face in more than a year. With colleagues who work from home in other states, this trip brought life and connection to our team that we greatly needed. Getting together with our full team was a breath of fresh air and brought forward new perspectives and ideas.
“The in-person retreat made me feel like I was part of a team, as opposed to a single player in a game. It was a refreshing reminder that my coworkers are not NPC’s. They are actual people with lives and interests. It’s easy to forget that when you work fully remote.” — Gravity Works Employee
During our trip, we covered topics that highlighted important areas of our company, such as company culture, opportunities for growth and improvement, and how we can stay on track with technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence in tech.
History of Gravity Works
Since moving to a remote company in 2020, it’s been more challenging for new employees to understand our company culture and past history, from hosting and participating in community events to playing board games.
UX & Design Ops Manager, Hailey Whisler, who’s been with the company since 2016 led the team through a fun timeline exercise to piece together important milestones in our company’s history.
“I felt it was important for us to take a step back and remember why Gravity Works was founded, where we’ve been, and what we’ve learned along the way that has shaped Gravity Works into the company it is today,” she said. “With so many new faces at the retreat, it felt like the right opportunity to share our past stories, which naturally led to productive conversations about where we want to go from here. What does our next chapter look like?”
Those who have been a part of the company for a while had a moment to reminisce on the memories of the past. Newer team members got a glimpse into what the company was like in the past and how it got to be where it is today. One thing that was on our minds was how Gravity Works has continued to keep some of these cultural traditions alive and how they have differed in the past couple years.
“I was impressed by the evolution of the company over time. It was cool to see the history all laid out.”
“Many important things have happened in this company since its start and it’s helpful to see a timeline of events.”
-GW Employees
Company Culture
Being remote has brought a whole new set of cultural norms. But as we learned more about the Gravity Works’ company culture pre-pandemic, it was a place of innovation, conversation, and community. The atmosphere was one where ideas were bounced from colleague to colleague in an open-space office environment. Now our company culture plays out over Slack, Zoom, and other technology.
Efforts to improve our company culture include Friday morning lightning talks, Slack channels to geek out about specific topics, and regular team time. Our lightning talks inspire creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and connection on topics including board games, Visual Studio Code, gardening, and sometimes random thoughts from our COO, Jeff McWherter. We have Slack channels for everyone to find a community, including pet lovers, crafting, and food. Finally, our internal teams have weekly meetings to cover work-related topics but also anything our coworkers find interesting.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is another important aspect of our company culture. We have an established DEI Committee that works to provide training and education, improve our recruitment and hiring processes, and encourage allyship. Some DEI initiatives include a monthly group discussion, celebrating diversity such as Black History and Pride month, and promoting healthy work-life balance.
We used the retreat to talk about how our culture has changed and the challenges of fostering culture in a remote work environment. We brainstormed ideas for imroving our culture and strengthening our the bond we feel with our team.
“Talking about company culture was also really insightful and I was excited to have the discussion with the whole team about how they see the culture evolving and what they want the culture to look like.” — GW Employee
Project Retrospectives
How can we learn as a company if we do not learn from our past? Lead project manager, Jeff Pompliano, talked to the team about the importance of project retrospectives. Project retrospectives consist of a review of completed projects, discussion of successes and failures, and opportunities to learn and apply these lessons to future projects.
It can be hard at times to view these retrospectives as a helpful tool, especially if you felt that you did your best. The point of these retros isn’t to point out our mistakes, but learn from our experience. It’s important for the team to keep in mind that everyone did their best work, given what they knew, their skills and abilities, and the resources available at the time with the situation at hand. Questions we ask ourselves include:
- What were our goals?
- What went well and what did not go well? Why?
- How can we improve on future projects?
Case studies of our current and past projects always play a huge role in these retrospectives. Our case studies provide a detailed summary of how Gravity Works helped our client overcome challenges and create the website they desired to have. We discuss the client’s goals for a project such as design, navigation, development, and content strategy, simplicity, or accessibility. After having clearly defined those goals, we ask ourselves as a team what went well in meeting those goals and what could have gone better. By taking this step, our teams have a better understanding of how to combat similar challenges in the future.
One major challenge that many tech companies struggle with often is scope creep. Scope creep is when more work is added to a project without adding more time, budget, or resources. As technology continues to evolve and clients expand on requirements, we continue to learn how we can best meet project goals while staying within our original timeline and budget.
“It was great to hear discussion from various perspectives on what designates a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ process. It was encouraging to hear people align on what we can do better from discovery to maintenance. I am very hopeful for the positive implementation of new ideas.”
“Jeff P did a great job explaining the importance of project retrospectives and why we do them. With some examples and practice retros, that was nice to recall how projects went.”
— Gravity Works Employees
Design Trends
Steve Jencks, our creative director, talked about design trends to expect in the next few years and how we can incorporate them into our work. He touched on design elements such as typography, color usage, and non-traditional layouts that break the mold and make an impactful statement. As designers, our job is to anticipate the needs of our clients. A keen eye for accessibility, aesthetics, and usability is where our design team shines through applied strategy and project context. When looking at typography, the trend is to move from the old to the bold. Creative color is moving from traditional to unexpected. Experimental layouts are using typography, imagery, and asymmetry to break the mold and display content in new and exciting ways.
As designer Massimo Vignelli would say, “Good design is a language, not a style.”
With trends such as artificial intelligence (AI) driving design platforms like MidJourney, the future provides an endless space for innovation and new ways to go above and beyond in design. We talked about how graphic designers can use AI for inspiration and to improve efficiencies in our design process, but the key ingredient in beautiful design remains pure creativity and original thought.
“Gravity Works has a lot of strength in our unity on what the project goals are and how to achieve them through the design and implementation. I enjoyed hearing Front End and User Experience collaboration on delighters and animation.” — Gravity Works Employee
What is Our Why: Mission, Vision, and Service
Our lead developer Kurt Trowbridge talked about our company mission, vision, and why we do what we do. When talking about why a company does what it does, we go into the intention behind the company and, more specifically, the drive behind the people of the company. Why do you do what you do and how does the work you do help others?
So what is it that Gravity Works does as a whole? “We are a services organization. We are in the business of building digital solutions to help good people accomplish great things.” As a team, it is our duty to provide a quality service to all of our clients and potential future clients.
Our work helps people learn, connect with others, and build and maintain an online community. We love what we do and the positive impact our work has on others.
We are constantly working towards our mission to help good people accomplish great things. We help one another both internally in our company and externally with the users who interact with our client’s websites. Each day we are faced with new challenges in which there is opportunity for continual learning and growth.And when we launch a new website, we can feel proud and appreciate a job well done.
“It was good to reflect on the real world positive impact we are making.”
“I loved talking about our mission, vision and service because it really spoke about what Gravity Works is all about and why they do what they do. It’s really encouraging to see such a caring and contributing company that hires great employees.”
-Gravity Works Employees
